IBM has told Wall Street that it has had to pay $160 million due to a ruling by the high court in London, in a legal dispute over retirement terms at its UK business. Big Blue said that the charges would not affect the company's operating reported results for the third quarter of 2012.

The company has been having a row with its employees over terms of its pensions for ages. The court decided that terms set in 1983 should be modified to allow some current IBM UK employees who are members of a specific plan to retire from the age of 60 instead of 63 without reduction of their defined benefit pension.

IBM said that it was considering an appeal. The company is scheduled to report on its third quarter financial results on Oct 16.

Electronic Arts has settled the monopoly lawsuit that alleged EA Sports had exclusive rights to the NFL video game license, as well as the NCAA and AFL (Arena Football League) video game licenses, which made it impossible for other companies to compete against EA.

The settlement will see owners of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii versions of the game receive $1.95 (or as much as $6.79) if they purchased copies of Madden on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube. EA has to set aside $27 million to fund the settlement payments to consumers.

The worst part of the settlement (or at least the part that many video game football fans are not going to like) is that EA is going to be barred from signing an exclusive licensing agreement with the AFL for five years; and EA will be unable to renew its agreement with the NCAA for college football for an additional five years once its agreement expires in 2014. This will open the door for perhaps a new licensing deal and new video games from another publisher, but it is hard to know who would want to take the development risk on a new NCAA or AFL title.

EA’s deal with the NFL and its Madden football titles are apparently unaffected by this settlement; but the deal still needs the final approval from the United States District Court, which apparently has not been approved yet.

Activision has confirmed that it has reached a deal to settle the Jason West and Vince Zampella lawsuit. All parties have reached a settlement in the dispute, the terms of which are strictly confidential. The company issued an additional statement, saying that the one-time charge related to the settlement will not result in a material impact on the company’s GAAP or non-GAAP earnings per share outlook.

By using your special decoder ring it is easy to determine by that statement that Activision has written West and Zampella a large check to go away, and the company is anxious to put this entire mess behind them. Activision seemed to be ready to fight it out in court. However, as more negative press mounted regarding the company’s behavior, pressure had to be mounting to resolve the situation, as it painted the company in such a negative way.

In addition to the settlement with West and Zampella, the separate lawsuit launched against Activision by 40 former Infinity Ward developers over unpaid bonuses and royalties has also apparently been settled, as well. As with the West and Zampella settlement, we don’t have a clue what the numbers look like and it is likely we will never know.